


Sterek: A Path Filled With Possibilities

by fanaddict



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Meta, Sterek Campaign, Subtext, fanon to canon, sterek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-19
Updated: 2013-03-19
Packaged: 2017-12-05 20:08:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/727404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fanaddict/pseuds/fanaddict
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Sterek Campaign asked for meta on what sterek means to fans and I went overboard writing up a shipper manifesto.  I do a character study of Stiles and Derek, what made them who they are, and what that implies about how they interact.  Then I discuss subtext - accidental chemistry and intentional writing, acting, directing and editing choices that lead to viewers seeing Sterek.  Finally, I discuss the various business factors that make Teen Wolf unique in television, which allows it to be one of the few current TV shows that could actually have a fanon to canon couple happen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sterek: A Path Filled With Possibilities

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much to omegastudent.tumblr.com for helping to make this sound better and be less disorganized. I really appreciate it! If you like this meta, it pretty much encapsulates what you'll find at my tumblr, fannishtalk.tumblr.com so feel free to come find me there.

The word that sums up Sterek for me is possibility. By possibility I mean both in how the characters interact in a shipper sense, but also as in the possibility that they could actually become canon - something I haven't believed possible for a fanon same sex ship since Xena and never prior to that. Ultimately, both of those possibilities tie in with how Derek and Stiles are written as characters and in how they interact, so that seems like a good place to start.

**Section 1: Canon**  
The Characters  
Stiles is written as the Sidekick - smart and snarky and slightly off center. Originally, he was clearly supposed to be the comic relief, but Dylan O'Brien can emote out of a paper bag and Stiles very quickly became a complex and interesting character. Stiles has the mind of a magpie, collecting every shiny fact it can and having the rare capacity to see connections between those facts that no one else could. For example, he can take in Scott being bit, healing unnaturally quickly, then dramatically improving physically and come up with the werewolf idea despite it seeming ridiculous. And at first it's a joke, but then he quickly realizes it's not and he starts taking steps to keep Scott and those he loves safe from Scott's hairy problem. 

Losing his mother taught him that no one is exempt from death and he isn't willing to allow anyone else he loves to die if he can do anything to stop it. Anything. He can't be the Hero, because the Hero must do the right thing and try to save everyone, but he's the one the Hero needs on his side because with his pragmatic approach he does what needs to be done. Stiles may say he wants to be Batman rather than Robin, but really the better analogy is that he's Tony Stark to Scott's Captain America.

Derek is written as the Anti-Hero - sad, tortured and disillusioned. He tries to do the right thing when he can, but he doesn't view himself as a Hero. Part of this is because he views himself as unworthy, and part is probably because his version of right thing doesn't always coincide with the other characters' version. If we're going back to the superhero analogy, Derek is Magneto fighting for the survival of himself and those he loves from forces that hate them for simply existing. His family burned simply for being werewolves, and that is when the Derek Hale we met on the show was born. 

Like many Anti-Heroes, Derek is loaded down with a plethora of personal issues, flaws, and challenges - including a survival instinct default setting, trust issues, numerous bad decisions, and lack of proper guidance from a young age onward. Derek lives a reactionary life, he’s constantly pivoting to confront whatever new threat is presenting itself and trying to hurt him or those around him. While he is willing to sacrifice himself for others, his primary state of being is pure survival instinct. This caused him to make bad decisions, like turning teenagers with issues into werewolves because he knew he needed a pack to survive what was coming. Derek lost his family because he fell in love and trusted the wrong person. He projects these things that he thinks about himself onto others when he tells Scott he can't be in love at 16 and Stiles that he doesn't trust anyone, when it's really himself he doesn't trust because of who he loved and he therefore feels no one should trust him. Not only does Derek make mistakes, but he also lacks the knowledge that would help him do better, presumably because he was a teen when his family died. Currently Deaton is better at criticizing than offering helpful advice/knowledge, and he's the closest Derek has to an adviser. 

The most important thing about Derek is that he tries. He may fail horribly at, well, just about everything, but he truly tries to help people as much as he can. Scott is the Hero Derek could have been if Kate hadn't happened, and Derek knows that deep down I think. That's why he wants Scott to trust him, join him, not make the same mistakes with an Argent that Derek did. Deep down, Derek wants to be a Hero, but he doesn't believe he can be.

Relationships S1 and S2  
Stiles and Derek never would have met if Scott hadn't been turned into a werewolf, and it's their relationships with him that defined their initial S1 interactions. When Derek was shot, he went to Scott for help, but with Scott came Stiles and ultimately it was Stiles with whom Derek spent what could have been his last hours. It was Stiles that he verbally threatened to keep him helping, but it was also Stiles that he trusted to be capable of cutting off his arm so he could live if it came to that. Later on, it was Stiles' room that he hid out in when wanted for murder by the police - which means he chose to hide right under the nose of Stiles' father, the sheriff. Why not with Scott? At that point in time it was pretty obvious that Scott wouldn't have protected him, but also Derek needed information and it was already becoming clear to Derek that Stiles was Scott's go to information source. 

Stiles could have turned Derek in easily, but he knew Derek was innocent and he understood that getting Derek the information would help Scott, possibly even allow Scott to kill the Alpha and regain his life (although Stiles is smart enough that he probably doubted that possibility). Stiles gave up his dream of being first string on lacrosse because it wasn't as important to him as learning the truth about who the Alpha was so he could help Scott and by default Derek. And Derek saw this, saw that Stiles knew what was important (hint not lacrosse), saw that Stiles was willing to sacrifice his dream to help someone he loved. Both Stiles and Derek know loss, and that means they know the value of holding tightly to people they love and not letting unimportant things cloud that goal. 

I think it was at this moment that Derek looked beyond Stiles as Scott's useful friend and realized he was someone Derek wanted on his side. In this same ep you have the famous scene where Derek pushed Stiles into a wall to try to threaten him to keep quiet and Stiles took away all of Derek's power - keeping it throughout the rest of the ep, no matter how hard Derek tried to get it back with the infamous head slam. It's also the scene that people love to make gifs from because of how close they stood while staring each other down and how they both alternated looking at each other's lips. So in one ep you have what appears to be sexual attraction and also a realization by Derek - and the audience - that Stiles and Derek work well together..

The ability to get things done defines their relationship in S2, even when they are working against each other. They have gone from being forced to interact through their relationships with Scott and formed their own intense relationship. Although Derek still goes through the motions of intimidation, Stiles isn't truly scared of him and they both know it. It is Stiles that Derek works with to get Isaac out of the police station, it is Stiles Derek cites as evidence of Lydia's personality matching the kanima, it is Stiles and Scott both that he tries to get Erica to recruit, it is Stiles he trusts to trap the kanima and work with Derek's pack as part of the larger group plan, and it is Stiles with whom he shares information about the kanima when both are paralyzed. 

Independent of Scott, they are willing to talk, plan and get things done. In fact, in S2 what prevents them from working together as a group is Scott hating Derek for killing Peter and thus stopping him from his long shot werewolf cure. So what brought them together in S1 keeps them apart in S2, when they both seem to have realized that their personalities mesh well together. If Scott can learn to at least tolerate Derek, then I don't see any reason why they couldn't be allies in S3 (note: I wrote this before Davis said in fact they would become allies in S3). 

Even when Derek and Stiles were separated by only knowing each other through Scott or not working together because of Scott, they still found time to save each other multiple times. Initially, it was more an issue of needing to keep each other alive so they could help each other/Scott. It was utilitarian. However, neither Stiles nor Derek are Scott's type of Hero, willing to try and save everyone, so in S2 when Stiles endangered himself to save Derek and Derek did the same for Stiles, it was an implicit statement that the other person was important to him, even when just seconds before they were on opposite sides (the pool scene for example). For all that Derek says he doesn't trust anyone to help him without ulterior motives (a statement of self worth), he consistently puts his own safety in Stiles hands and places Stiles' safety above his own in situations where he has to act on instinct. 

As for Stiles, not only did he hold Derek up with the last of his strength in the pool, but he also sagged with relief when he saw Derek show up to fight Matt and then the kanima to get it away from his father, the most important person in Stiles' life. This is important because it shows he not only values Derek's life and that he trusts Derek with his, but also that he trusts Derek with his dad's life too - and arguably that says more about how he views Derek than anything else.

So in canon, you have two people whose personalities mesh well, allowing them to get things done. You have Derek, whose most serious problem is lack of information about, well, just about everything, and Stiles whose biggest contribution is his ability to access information and put it together. You have two people who have been in high stress situations together and have depended upon each other for safety. You have two people who feel survivor's guilt over a lost loved one and know the value of protecting those they care about, no matter what the personal cost. And you have two people who, in my opinion, have amazing chemistry together. What they have as characters is relationship magic because it's filled with the potential of what they could do together and what they could mean to each other. 

No, they are not right on the verge of dating and getting married to live happily ever after, but what they have is the possibility that they COULD have that - and if they did, it would be amazing. They have the same relationship that is often seen in rom com movies, where the couple meets, snarks at each other and then gradually they come to rely on each other - think Romancing the Stone with werewolves. So if Jeff Davis wants to make Sterek canon, he could simply follow the trajectory that has already been laid out in their canon interactions, which is where we segue into the meta section.

**Section 2 Meta**

First I'm going to mention that nebulous topic of actor chemistry. While chemistry between actors exists, how it's interpreted is in the eye of the beholder. Another important thing to understand is chemistry does not happen between most actors (by the way I'm using actor as a gender neutral noun here), so when it does it's like catching lightning in a bottle - too rare to pass up. But how can we discuss something that is almost literally defined by "I know it when I see it", which is about as non-scientific as it gets? 

I took a bit of time to read up on actor chemistry, and why some people click together and some just don't. The first and least defined thing about chemistry is that when the 2 actors are together onscreen, viewers are emotionally invested in their interactions rather than also considering other aspects of the scene or mentally composing their grocery list. What makes it chemistry as opposed to writing is that this happens consistently when they are together, regardless of the importance of the scene. On the actor side, it starts with the intensity of the interactions with both actors fully committed and focused on the other person. It's how they look at each other, and for romantic chemistry where their eyes dip to (mouth and cleavage both suggest attraction). It's when there are other actors in the scene, but they keep looking at each other. It’s when they interact closely in a way that feels like a very natural almost subconscious interplay between the actors, rather than a more “actorly” one. 

Sexual chemistry tends to be all about the two actors sucking all of the oxygen out of a scene and into a little bubble that encompasses only them and feels like it could combust with tension, whereas comic chemistry is about expanding the "bubble" to the audience so viewers smile/laugh at their interactions. It's an inward focus vs an outward focus. So, specific to sterek, Stiles and Derek have great chemistry together. As actors, Dylan O'Brien and Tyler Hoechlin have a very natural feel when interacting, are good at focusing on each other, and both bring their A game acting skills to every scene together so you see subtle little gestures between them that as viewers we subconsciously notice and feel, helping us become emotionally invested in the pairing. Although the actors/Davis describe the relationship as being that of comic foil, the fact is the way it is acted/written/filmed evokes the more singular bubble world of sexual chemistry.

When we talk about chemistry between two characters who aren't in a rom com romance, it's difficult to determine if there is any intentional subtext, and it's certainly not "canon" in the sense that it's normally defined. When we talk about canon, we talk about what makes it to our TV screens - and that is a group effort involving the writers, the actors, the crew and the editors. Any one and all of them are responsible for the scenes that we interpret as having large amounts of subtext. Unlike actor chemistry which is accidental, subtext doesn't just fall from a tree, it's not something that happens multiple times without intent. And we know all the scenes between Stiles and Derek are not there by accident because Jeff Davis has said he and the other writers recognize the magic between Stiles and Derek, they even list them first on the pairings board, presumably for the writers to place together in tense situations. 

Therefore, Derek hiding in Stiles’ bedroom – that is the writer’s choice. Derek throwing him up against a wall and having a mutual exchange of threats establishing for both of them that at that moment Stiles was the one in charge - that is the writer’s choice. Stiles getting Derek to do a strip tease for Danny - that is the writers having Stiles exploit Derek’s abs for homoerotic appreciation. It is the writers who trapped them for 2 hours in a pool together not the kanima, and it is the writers who had them paralyzed together and exchanging information/ideas on the floor of the police station. In most of these cases, putting Stiles and Derek together wasn’t the most obvious choice the writers could have made but they recognized it as a fun dynamic to exploit.

Similarly, when Derek threw Stiles up against a wall to threaten him, it was the actors and/or director who chose to have them flicker their eyes down to each other's mouth and back, and to straighten each other's clothes. Certainly the director could have shot it from farther out to make it less intimate. And the editor could easily have edited it to be less erotically charged. Another scene where Derek's eyes flicker toward Stiles' mouth is in the police car early in S1 when he was trying to convince Stiles to stop Scott from playing lacrosse. That has to be a director or actor choice because Hoechlin probably wasn't even looking at O'Brien in that scene, he would have been filming a reaction shot - and yet it's a clear eye flicker to where Stiles' mouth would be. That's a choice that's not even remotely accidental. 

Similarly, having paralyzed Stiles fall on top of paralyzed Derek was a definite choice that was made by the writers, how they positioned themselves was chosen by the actors, how it was shot with closeups of them, etc was chosen by the director. After Stiles was pulled off again it was shot from a medium distance to best show how physically close they were while becoming emotionally closer, which was also chosen by the director. 

One thing the writers love to do is trap Stiles and Derek in a car together, and it's often shot in a way that emphasizes their verbal sparring but also the equality of their relationship. The setting creates an intimacy between the characters that we see as viewers, and when Stiles reaches out to touch Derek's shoulder or Derek grabs Stiles arm, the already intimate setting brings an intensity to such touches - something that has increased over time. In 1x04, they were shot from a farther distance and Derek grabbing Stiles' arm to talk in the phone was part of their antagonism. By 1x09 they were shot with a more focused close up and Derek gave Stiles a very vulnerable look all of which was again an actor's choice, a director's choice and an editor's choice. Finally in 2x02, they are shot quite close up and you have Stiles reaching out to Derek and grabbing him as a way to help him come up with a better seduction technique. That right there had a mega-load of choices from the writer, actors, director and editors to create a very fun yet intimate moment between them. And when Derek saves Stiles from Isaac, it was shot to show Derek in a heroic stance looking back proudly at Stiles, who looked up with his mouth open and eyes wide - a scene very similar to movies where the hero has just saved the heroine (and hopefully vice versa will be true someday).

Basically, the upshot of this section is - we are not creating subtext from a vacuum. Everyone involved in Teen Wolf has made choices that increased the intensity and emotional intimacy between Stiles and Derek, and combined it with a physical intimacy in many cases as well. If that's not intentional homoerotic subtext, then a whole lot of people aren't doing their jobs well. How likely is that? A lot of shows have intentional homoerotic subtext though, and there's no reason to believe any of them could go canon, so why sterek?

**Section 3 Why I think it could go canon**

The first thing to remember is Jeff Davis is telling the story he wants to tell, and it is he who will decide if sterek happens in canon. I've argued against the probability of a fanon ship going canon for other shows because almost invariably you have some combination of what would happen to ratings (an unknown), the show having been on long enough for syndication deals, the network on which it is on, if one of the pair is one of the main characters, and if one character is also part of another popular pairing, etc. While I would love for as many fanon ships to go canon as possible, the reality is that the combination of factors that would allow it to have the possibility of happening is rare. 

In the case of Teen Wolf these factors all combine to make it theoretically possible. It is on a network with a much younger demographic than other networks and one that wants to get back it's "edgy" reputation that it had years ago because that will attract even more young viewers. The controversy of a fanon m/m ship going canon would net MTV publicity in a way that is viewed as positive by their target audience (since all studies suggest younger viewers are gay friendly). MTV has been very sterek-positive and that's because for the network it would be a plus. Additionally, MTV's sister company at Viacom Media Networks is LOGO TV, which is geared toward the LGBTQ+ community. Although Teen Wolf hasn't reached the magic number of 100 episodes for syndication to outside networks, through MTV and LOGO's corporate relationship, the show is now being shown on LOGO, bringing to it an even larger audience that would appreciated a Sterek relationship. Since many shows make their profit through syndication deals (especially the ones under the same corporate umbrella), the fact Teen Wolf is on LOGO rather than one of the other Viacom networks (such as Spike TV) is a significant indicator for who MTV/Viacom thinks is watching. 

Additionally, neither Derek nor Stiles is currently part of another pairing that is very popular, and that is important because showrunners are nervous about losing any type of fans, including the ones who are devoted to a different pairing. Naturally, they are hesitant to risk losing the fans of one pairing by making a different pairing canon.

The most important factor, though, is that neither Derek nor Stiles is the Hero of the Story - that's Scott, who is adorable and also deeply in love with Allison in what can only be described as the supernatural version of Romeo&Juliet. The het romance is already built in for an audience who wants that. It's extremely important that Stiles and Derek are not the primary character because that allows them to develop in ways that the Hero can't - they can be psychologically darker, they can do things the Hero can't, they aren't locked in to some writerly predestined romance that will span the entire series. They COULD be any of the things a Hero is, but they have the leeway to be exactly what Jeff Davis wants to write them as - and that includes becoming a couple. 

I don't know if that is part of his story, or if he could be persuaded to deviate from his expected path to make it happen. What I do know is that Teen Wolf has a rare confluence of events as a show on a young target audience network, syndicated on an LGBTQ+ oriented network, with an incredibly popular fanon slash ship that has been greeted very positively by the actors, network, and showrunner. Not to mention that the showrunner himself has said that he could be persuaded to make the ship canon. I personally will be very disappointed in Jeff Davis if he doesn't realize how rare his opportunity to make this happen is and he lets it pass him by. He doesn't have to change his end game if he doesn't want to, but he could certainly deviate their path into canon sterek if he wanted to - to do anything else would be a failure of imagination and opportunity. And that’s why I believe that in some manner, Jeff Davis will make sterek canon.

I want to thank everyone for reading this far, and also say an incredibly heartfelt thank you to omegastudent on tumblr who did an amazing job reading this through and offering wonderfully detailed suggestions to make it read more smoothly and so the ideas didn't get lost in a disorganized mess. Thank you so much!


End file.
